Chapter Text
Irina was thirty-eight weeks and three days when Marya came to her room.
She knew because she had counted. The man who had taken her had kept track of nothing useful. He did not know the day she had conceived. He did not know what week she was. For seventeen of the last twenty-one days he had been gone. When he was present he stood in her doorway and looked at her belly. He owned it, in his head. He had taken her for it.
Bloodlines were his obsession. Good Russian stock, he had called her. Good Russian omega. He had said it every time he came to her. She had fought him. She had bitten and screamed and torn at his face. None of it had stopped him. In the third month she had stopped fighting, which angered him because her fire turned him on.
The child had grown too big for her body. She felt that. The doctor had confirmed it in the eighth month. The child measured large, he had said. Very large. Her omega frame was small and the child was not. He had said it carefully and would not say more. She had thanked him. He had not looked at her again.
She had been bleeding from her gums for two weeks. Her ankles were so swollen the skin had split in places. She could not turn over in bed without help. Her sisters had borne wolf cubs. She knew the shape of a wolf cub pregnancy. This was something else. She did not know what it was. She knew she would not survive him.
The question was only where she would die. The woods or Silverclaw. Not here.
She would have refused help. His wife Marya sent a maid every morning and Irina sent the maid away. Marya herself had not come to Irina's room since the third month.
Tonight Marya came.
The door opened without a knock. Marya stood inside it in a white dressing gown, hair twisted up, one pearl earring missing. She had been working on something Irina would not be told about. She closed the door behind her and crossed to the window and looked out at her own courtyard. Then she spoke.
"Grigori is in Moscow until the eighth."
"Yes."
"I have spoken to the doctor about your child. He is a boy."
Irina didn't reply, only folded her hands in her lap.
"My husband has only daughters by me. He has wanted a son for fifteen years. He took you to get one. Your boy will be his."
Marya turned from the window. She did not sit. She did not come near the bed.
"You will leave tonight. By the back. There is a fence behind the kennels. The dogs know your scent. They will not bark."
"Why are you helping me?"
"Because if you stay in this house you will give him the son I could not. My daughters will inherit nothing the day he names yours heir. I have buried two of my own children. I will not have you give him in one night what I could not give him in fifteen years."
"I would not let that monster claim him."
"You would not have a choice. The state owns every shifter born outside an enclave. They register the child within seventy-two hours. They take him at sixteen for the army. My husband owns the man who runs the registry. Whatever the state knows my husband knows by the morning. If you deliver in any building that pays taxes, your son is on the list before the cord is cut. My husband will find him before the boy can walk, and he will keep him whether you live or die."
"And if I deliver in the woods?"
"Then you deliver in the woods. Unregistered. Unowned by anyone but you."
Marya reached into the pocket of her gown. She set three things on the bedside table.
"The knife is for the boy on your watch. He is new and foolish. He will come if you call him close. The money is for the road. The key is for the back gate. Remember I have not been in this room tonight. Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"When my husband returns from Moscow I will tell him you escaped and died in the woods. You and the child both. I will tell him I found the body and cremated it. He will not search for either of you. He will mourn a week and then look for another."
Irina could only nod.
"Do not come back. Do not send word. Forbid your son from speaking my husband's name in any room where another wolf can hear him. If you do these three things you may live longer than I expect you to."
"Marya."
"Do not speak my name to me, omega."
She left.
The door closed without sound. The lock did not turn.
Irina sat on the edge of the bed. She picked up the knife. She picked up the bill. She picked up the key. She put them in the pocket of her dress and she waited for midnight.
The boy on her watch was named Lev. He had been there for three weeks. Bread and water came on a tray, set on the floor inside her door. His eyes went to her belly when he thought she would not see. He had asked her once, in the second week, whether she had been a model because she was so beautiful. She had told him no. He had brought her tea the next night, unasked. He stood in the doorway. The cup was in his hands. He waited until she nodded for him to set it down. He was eighteen years old. His mother lived in Vyborg. He had wanted to impress his pakhan.
This was not his destiny.
He came at midnight. The tray went on the floor inside the door. He looked up. The lamp was low. Her hair was loose down her back. The chair was pulled closer to the window.
"Lev."
He stopped.
"Stay."
He looked at the floor. His eyes went to her belly. He did not leave.
"I am scared," she said. "I am so scared. Come here."
He came toward her. He thought she was crying. She was not.
"Closer."
He knelt beside her chair. The cub was shifting under her ribs and kicking hard.
"It hurts."
He reached for her hand. She let him have it.
She put the knife under his jaw and into his brain before he had finished saying her name.
The body slumped against her chair. Blood came warm onto her dress and her thighs and the floor. She wiped the blade on his shirt and put it in her pocket. His coat came off easier than she expected.
She walked out of the room on her own feet. She did not run. Running would tear something inside her and she could not afford it yet.
The corridor was empty.
She had been told about the back door three weeks ago, before she knew Marya had told her. It opened on the kennels. Past the kennels stood a fence. Past the fence was forest.
The dogs knew her scent. They did not bark.
She used the key. She climbed the chain link one-handed with her belly against the wire and dropped on the other side. Something shifted in her low and wet and she did not let herself look down.
She left the key in the lock. Marya could explain it or not.
The forest was dark and cold.
She walked for hours. The direction of Toronto was a guess. She remembered the road. Grigori's men had driven her down it when they brought her here. The moon was overhead. She walked toward both.
The sky was graying when she found the road. She knelt in the ditch. Her legs would not hold her any longer.
A truck came.
It slowed. A man leaned out the window. He was old and bearded. He looked worried.
"Lord, miss. Lord, you need a hospital."
"Town," she said. "I need town."
"You need a doctor. You're in labor, miss. My wife was a nurse. I know what I'm seeing."
"Town."
She put her hand on the door handle and waited for him to decide.
He decided.
He helped her up into the cab. His name was Earl. He laid his coat over her belly. The heater came on. He drove.
For two hours he talked. His daughter had been a hard birth. His wife was a nurse named Marjorie. He believed the Lord watched out for women in the woods. He told her she was a brave girl. His daughter had a baby boy now, he said. The boy was named Earl Junior. His daughter said it was a stupid name and Earl agreed. He did not ask why Irina had been out there, or whose blood was on her sleeves, or anything about her. He kept the heat on.
He let her off at the eastern edge of the enclave at sunrise, without knowing what the eastern edge of the enclave was. He told her to find her people. She told him she was finding them. He took her hands in his and prayed over them for a moment and then he drove away.
She walked through the gate of Silverclaw on her own feet.
She fell on the other side.
II.
Anton was in the council chamber when the runner came.
He had been arguing with Pyotr Rozanov, Irina's father, about a vote on perimeter funding. He stopped the second he saw the boy's face.
"At the gate," the boy said. "Alpha. At the gate."
"Who."
"Her."
Anton was running before the boy finished the word.
She was on the ground inside the gate. Her hair was wet and dark. There was blood on her sleeves and blood on her thighs and her belly was enormous under a man's coat she did not own. Her eyes were open.
"Anton."
He went down on his knees beside her. He did not know where to put his hands.
"Irinushka."
"Get my mother."
"Yes."
"Get the midwife. Don't take me to a hospital. They will register him. They will take him."
"I know."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
He put his arms under her shoulders and her knees and he picked her up. She was lighter than she should have been. She was heavier in the belly than any wolf woman he had ever lifted.
He carried her to her father's house. He did not run with her. Running would have hurt her more than he could justify.
Pyotr met them in the courtyard. The old wolf did not speak. He pressed his hand to his daughter's forehead and turned and led Anton up the stairs without a word.
Natasha came down in a robe. She did not cry. She did not ask.
"On the bed. Hot water. Linens. Pyotr, get out. Anton, you also."
"Mama," Irina said.
"I am here."
"Mama, I am sorry."
"Hush."
The midwife was a Rozanov cousin who had attended every Silverclaw birth for thirty years. She arrived in five minutes. Anton sat on the floor of the next room with his back to the wall and his hands open on his thighs. Pyotr sat across from him. They did not speak.
Anton heard Irina scream once. He heard her stop. Through the wall came the midwife's voice, words too low to catch, fast and steady. Natasha was praying in old Russian, the words his own mother had used.
He heard the cub cry.
It was a long cry, and then a longer one, and then nothing.
Then Natasha was in the doorway.
"Anton."
He stood up.
"Come."
Pyotr did not rise. His hands had folded in his lap and he was looking at them.
Anton followed Natasha into the room.
Irina was on the bed. The midwife was working between her legs with cloths and her hands were red to the wrist. There was too much blood. It all over the floor and the sheets and Natasha's robe.
The cub was on Irina's chest.
He had been born a wolf. He was small and dark. His eyes were closed. Natasha had wrapped him in a cream wool blanket. Irina's hand was on his back.
"Anton."
He came to the side of the bed. He sat. He took her free hand.
"He is called Ilya."
"Ilya."
"Antonovich."
He did not understand. Then he did. He could not speak.
"Rozanov. Ilya Antonovich Rozanov. Write it that way. Promise me."
"I promise. Who--"
"His father's name dies with me."
"Irina."
"Promise me."
"I promise. On my blood."
She turned her face toward the cub. She did not look at Anton again.
"Mishka," she said to the baby. "Moy mishka. I am sorry I cannot stay."
She closed her eyes.
The midwife worked another minute and then she stopped working. Natasha put her hand over Irina's eyes and held it there. The midwife crossed herself.
The cub made a small sound.
Natasha picked him up. She wrapped him tighter in the cream blanket. She walked around the bed to where Anton was sitting and she put the cub in his arms.
"Your son."
"Natasha."
"Your son. Now and always. Do you understand me, Anton Sergeevich?"
"Yes."
"Say it."
"My son."
"Again."
"My son."
The cub opened his eyes. They were yellow gold. He looked at Anton and Anton looked back.
Anton stood up with the cub in his arms. He had not held a cub in years.
"Take him home," Natasha said. "I will send a wet nurse before the morning. Do not let anyone see him before he is blessed at the temple. Do you hear me."
"Yes."
"Go, Anton."
He went.
He carried the cub down the stairs of the Rozanov house. He passed Pyotr in the hall. The old man stood up. He looked at his grandson once. He sat back down.
Anton walked out into the dawn.
Silverclaw was waking. Wolves were out in the streets. They saw the bundle in his arms. No one spoke. The wolves in the doorways stepped aside and he passed through.
He carried the cub to his own house and he closed the door behind him.
He sat down in the chair beside the cold hearth and he held the cub in his lap and he looked at him.
The cub looked back. His eyes were yellow gold. He did not cry. He did not blink.
Anton put his hand on the cub's head. The fur was dark and damp from the birth.
"Ilya," he said. He said it again. "Ilya Antonovich. My son."
The cub opened his mouth and mewled.
He had been quiet since Natasha had put him in Anton's arms. He was not quiet now. The cry filled the room. It did not stop.
Anton stood up. He rocked the cub. He whispered the name. The cry kept going.
Rain began.
Anton looked at the window. The sky had been clear an hour ago. There were clouds now. Rain was hitting the glass. Thunder was behind it.
He looked back. Yellow eyes met him. The crying stopped.
Outside, the rain did not stop.